Tour and his team of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers not only built a car, but also constructed a nanotruck capable of carrying a payload. Asked why he did it, Tour's answer was simple: so that we can someday construct buildings and other large objects with molecular-size vehicles.

Both women have developed ways to cope with their experiences. When AW touches an aversive texture, she sings to distract herself from it. Feeling something made of silver - a positive texture - can also cancel out unpleasant tactile-emotions. The same trick helps her feel better after a bad day.

As the superheroes see it, the fact that they can't project energy bolts or summon force fields only adds to the purity of their commitment. Their heroism, in a sense, derives from their lack of powers. What they have instead is the power to craft themselves anew.

But critics of the movement worry that these amateurs could one day unleash an environmental or medical disaster. Defenders say the future Bill Gates of biotech could be developing a cure for cancer in the garage. Many of these amateurs may have studied biology in college but have no advanced degrees and are not earning a living in the biotechnology field. Some proudly call themselves "biohackers" — innovators who push technological boundaries and put the spread of knowledge before profits.

In fact, those who seek to make large changes often end up failing even to make the most minor corrections. The more an individual believes he can set his own rudder as he pleases, the more likely he is to run aground. That’s one reason why so many smokers who tell you that they can quit whenever they want are still smoking 20 years later. -- The cure for false hope is to set more reasonable goals and recognize that achieving even modest change will be difficult. And if you are older than 30, remember that your openness to new experiences is slowly declining, so you are better off making a new start today than postponing it until later.

Drugs may seem distinctive among enhancements in that they bring about their effects by altering brain function, but in reality so does any intervention that enhances cognition. Recent research has identified beneficial neural changes engendered by exercise, nutrition and sleep, as well as instruction and reading. In short, cognitive-enhancing drugs seem morally equivalent to other, more familiar, enhancements.

7.12.08

Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs. Just replace the words husband, wife, spouse, or fiancé with boyfriend, girlfriend, special friend, or longtime companion. -- They say their beliefs don’t recognize my marriage, I say my beliefs don’t recognize theirs. Simple.

Telomere biologist Bill Andrews of Sierra Sciences is taking a telomerase-boosting supplement called TA-65. "I believe it's safer than driving my car to work," he says. Since he started taking it a year and a half ago, Andrews says he has moved from the back of the pack to the front in 100-mile runs known as ultramarathons. But don't expect to find TA-65 at your local Vitamin Shoppe. It is available only from TA Sciences—for $25,000 a year.

Mr. Bhidé derides the conventional view in science and technology circles as “techno-nationalism,” needlessly alarmist and based on a widely held misunderstanding of how technological innovation yields economic growth. In his view, many analysts put too much emphasis on the production of new technological ideas. Instead, he observes, the real economic payoff lies in innovations in how technologies are used.

Lacking the ACTN3 protein does not seem to have any harmful health effects, but there does seem to be an effect on sports performance. Several studies have found that Olympic-level power athletes always have at least one working copy of the ACTN3 gene.

Keltner believes certain people are "vagal superstars"—in the lab he has measured people who have high vagus nerve activity. "They respond to stress with calmness and resilience, they build networks, break up conflicts, they're more cooperative, they handle bereavement better." He says being around these people makes other people feel good. "I would guarantee Barack Obama is off the charts. Just bring him to my lab." -- The vagus nerve works with oxytocin, the hormone of connection. -- "We had to evolve these emotions to devote ourselves into social collectives," he says.

2.12.08

The environmental movement gained much of its persuasive power by pointing out that for structural reasons we were likely to make bad environmental decisions: a legal system based on a particular notion of what “private property” entailed and an engineering or scientific system that treated the world as a simple, linearly related set of causes and effects. In both of these conceptual systems, the environment actually disappeared; there was no place for it in the analysis. Small surprise, then, that we did not preserve it very well. I have argued that the same is true about the public domain. The confusions against which the Jefferson Warning cautions, the source-blindness of a model of property rights centered on an “original author,” and the political blindness to the importance of the public domain as a whole (not “my lake,” but “the Environment”), all come together to make the public domain disappear, first in concept and then, increasingly, as a reality. To end this process we need a cultural environmentalism, an environmentalism of the mind, and over the last ten years we have actually begun to build one.

Working with Richmond, molecular geneticist Edward Ginns used a molecular decoy called DNA antisense to partially shut down production of a receptor for dopamine in a region of the monkeys’ brains called the rhinal cortex that associates visual cues with reward. The treatment diminished dopamine’s effects to the point that the monkeys could no longer predict when any given trial would earn them a juice treat. Thus, they hedged their bets, working hard all the time as if “they are always one trial away from the penultimate,” Richmond says. -- “Habits become nonconscious brain processes,” Pychyl says. “When procrastination becomes chronic, a person is, essentially, running on autopilot.” Some experts suggest replacing the reflex to postpone with time-stamped prescriptions for action. Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer of New York University and the University of Konstanz in Germany advises creating “implementation intentions,” which specify where and when you will perform a specific behavior. So rather than setting a vague goal such as “I will get healthy,” set one with its implementation, including timing, built in—say, “I will go to the health club at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow.”

“My research hypothesis is that intelligent robots can behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can,” said Ronald C. Arkin -- -- Dr. Arkin, a Christian who acknowledged the help of God and Jesus Christ in the preface to his book --